Monday, August 13, 2012

Goatsy!

Among my favorite animals at the State Fair are the goats...

"Pssst! Lady! See that red box to the right? No, YOUR right! If you put a quarter in it, you can feed me!"

Just behind the row of Feed Me pens was an enclosure with a bunch of baby goats... er, kids, I think they're called. Anyhow, sorry for the blurred photo, but the fox terrier-size critters were in a sort of constant orbiting hyperkinetic Brownian motion and consequently the chainlink around their enclosure had a more-or-less continuous lamination of kids, three third-graders deep the whole way 'round.

They will also eat anything on our property (other than the abundant grass and weeds) such as our fruit trees, blackberry bushes, strawberry plants, anything in our garden (once again excluding weeds), our chicken feed, and random non-food items left lying around such as shoes, bicycle seats, dolls/teddy bears, etc...

The only way I've found that keeps them *mostly* contained is to buy a harness that goes around their face and head--then you buy plastic-coated steel cable and tether them somewhere. You can't skimp and get a dog collar--they *will* strangle themselves eventually by twisting and turning and rolling over to try to escape.

Have spare cables--they'll eventually twist it enough that it breaks.

Have spare harnesses--they will practically rub their face off against a fence, tree, your leg, etc... until the harness breaks.

In the end, they will still escape. If they're small enough, you shouldn't have trouble wrestling them back into a harness or re-attaching a new cable.

If they look too big to capture or they start trying to ram you, save yourself the hassle and shoot them. They taste good.

Had a summer job in HS working on a hobby farm. Guy was away on business a lot and his wife liked animals so she got a menagerie. Horses, a mini burro (liked him), and a few goats of the fainting variety.

Hated those goats with a passion.

Got fed up one day. Boss lady had some friends over one day. I had gotten ahold of a starter's pistol.

Walked over to where the goats were mooching about and squeezed off six shots.

You must be doing something wrong. My parents have been breeding meat goats for years, and they don't seem to have any trouble with keeping them in at all. The electric fence has done a fine job of keeping them where they belong.

I, too, am a goat fan. One of my favorite critters is Charlie Elvis, a billy goat kid owned (secretly, it's against the law here) by my landlord and his wife. I push my hand against his forehead and he butts right back at it. When I visit their house, I try to have a good index card to feed him. I love goats for their funny-looking weirdness, the strange vertical pupils in their eyes, their skin tags, and their fondness for eating paper.

I've been around swiss goats mostly, and the milk is good as well as the nature of them. For whatever reason they seem to get along with some horses. Gramps had big draft horses and if you put their goat friend in a separate enclosure, sooner or later a Percheron would reach over the fence, pick the goat up by a horn, and put it in their enclosure. The goat seemed fine with that. They kept the horses calm and got along really well. Maybe it's just the swiss goats that are like that. I know I've worked with sheep too, and they're a huge pain in the ass. Gimme a goat every time.

My neighbor in PA went through his goat phase. He was a city boy and bought all sorts of critters for his 10 acres. He couldn't keep the goats in fence and the always ended up in my horse pasture. No big deal, they do keep the weeds down and the horses mostly ignored them.

I had about a dozen pallets so I built them a big playground in his paddock and the goats were in heaven. They would play king of the mountain all day long.

They got banished when they got loose and played king of the mountain on a yuppies BMW convertable. I think they ate part of the roof as well.

One of my Dear Dead Uncles used to use his goats as lawn mowers. He would tether them to an heavy thing, and when he figured they had chopped the grass back enough in that area, he would move the heavy thing. He never had to start up a lawn mower.